Lincoln Unified budget: Sunny outlook for first time in years

Wednesday

Jun 26, 2013 at 12:01 AMJun 26, 2013 at 6:43 AM

STOCKTON - Weeks earlier than expected, new solar-energy systems were powered on in early June at eight Lincoln Unified campuses, producing cost savings that have been factored into the new district budget that is expected to be approved tonight by the school board.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - Weeks earlier than expected, new solar-energy systems were powered on in early June at eight Lincoln Unified campuses, producing cost savings that have been factored into the new district budget that is expected to be approved tonight by the school board.

The solar systems, paid for with money from the district's successful 2012 bond election, are expected to save Lincoln Unified about $750,000 off its utility costs in 2013-14, said Rebecca Hall, the district's top business official.

Additionally, Hall said, the district's $60.4 million general-fund budget anticipates $326,000 in solar-energy rebates from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in the new fiscal year.

"That's money that can go back into the classroom," Hall said Tuesday.

Voters passed Proposition 30 in November, and the combination of the new tax and a brightening state economy allowed school business officials this year to drop the phrase "worst-case scenario" from their budget-update vocabularies.

Not that everything is perfect.

When the California economy was at its worst, the state began to withhold millions of dollars in promised funding to school districts, which in turn had to take out loans to continue to operate.

This week, Hall said, Lincoln Unified is anticipating receiving about $9 million from California through Proposition 30, but she said the state still will be about $9.3 million behind in funding the district.

Hall said the state will continue in the coming months to play catch-up on past funding that has been deferred, but it also will continue to defer current funding.

"At the same time they're making us whole, they're not paying us for the current year," Hall said.

Still, Lincoln Unified will operate in 2013-14 on a 180-day academic calendar for the first time in several years; the district plans to add several teaching positions; it will expand a program that serves its expelled high school students to include seventh- and eighth-graders; and it will introduce a program for young adults with special needs.

Lincoln Unified's budget was developed against the backdrop of a new California educational funding system whose precise details are still being sorted through by Hall and business officials from other districts.

The new system is intended to benefit Lincoln Unified and other school districts with significant numbers of students from low-income backgrounds. Hall said there is a feeling of relief for school districts, a sense that years of extreme hard times may be at an end.

"We really maintained," she said. "We made it through, and now we can start looking up."